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6 A HISTORY OF THE MOVIES
vise such a camera, but glass is so heavy and breakable that it was impossible to construct a machine to use it, and as long as the seekers continued to work with glass their search was hopeless. Sensitized papers and fabrics were tried as substitutes, and were unsatisfactory. Celluloid had been invented and experimenters in Europe and America were trying to discover a coating or "film" of chemicals which would enable them to use this tough, flexible, substance in photography instead of glass plates. George Eastman and his associates at Rochester, New York, had developed the amateur camera, the Kodak, and if they could devise a substitute for glass plates or sensitized cloth or paper they were confident that photography would become very popular. Hannibal Goodwin, a New Jersey minister and chemist, and the Eastman group discovered methods of superimposing a film on celluloid about the same time, 1888-1890. The discovery became the subject of lengthy litigation; Goodwin died and his patents and processes passed to a corporation which brought suit against Eastman, which Eastman settled after many years. The Goodwin interests were never extensive manufacturers of film, and the Eastman company became the largest domestic or foreign maker of the product.
Thomas Alva Edison, famous as the inventor of the incandescent lamp and many other marvels, was deeply interested in the phonograph, which he had produced and placed on the market in 1880-85, as a method of popular amusement. The "talking machine" was fixed into a cabinet, the mechanism of which was started by a coin, and a song or a speech was transmitted through tubes to the listener's ears. Men rented store-rooms and set rows of cabinets along the walls, and customers went from one to another, enjoying the new entertainment so much that the phonograph, even its early cabinet form, became a commercial success.
Edison always had watched nearly all fields of invention carefully, and the efforts of various experimenters to produce mo